


When The Road Darkens

by Vae



Category: A Knight's Tale (2001)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-18
Updated: 2010-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-13 18:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/pseuds/Vae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knighthood and fealty mean more than just being a boy playing with a stick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The Road Darkens

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Enigel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/gifts).



> A Knight's Tale belongs to Brian Helgeland and Black and Blu Entertainment. I make no claim of ownership. No copyright infringment is intended, and I make no profit from this work of fanfiction.
> 
> Written for Yuletide 2010.

Edward may be Prince of Wales and heir to the throne of England, but his court is held in Aquitaine. With memories of miserable London winters shivering under snow and German ones in which he’d woken to find the canvas of his tent frozen stiff (on the nights he’d been fortunate enough to have a tent), Will is relieved to follow the man who knighted him back across the channel and through France as the days cool and the mornings grow darker and later. It’s not as if Will has a manor to offer Jocelyn to shelter her from English winters and, of course, Edward is well aware of that.

Ennoblement brings responsibilities. He not only has a wife (the wedding celebrated a week after he won the tournament) but also an entourage. It’s disconcerting to discover that the people who were friends are suddenly his responsibility. Roland is relatively self-sufficient, but having responsibility for Wat is exhausting even with Kate helping to keep him in line. Mostly _because_ Kate is helping to keep him in line, since Kate apparently finds it more amusing to provoke Wat’s temper than keep him out of fights. At least he’s not responsible for Chaucer. He suspects that would prove more expensive than his purse could support.

Will’s purse, full from the tournament win, is fully employed supporting Jocelyn. A place in Edward’s retinue means Jocelyn needs new dresses, jewels, a palfrey suitable for her to ride and another for her maid, riding boots, dancing slippers, endless adornments. He grudges none of it. It delights him to know that he can provide for her, to see her beauty shine in rich fabric and elaborate headdresses, gracing the high table of the lords who host them on their way to Aquitaine. Once they reach Aquitaine, the seamstresses of Edward’s court praise her figure, her elegance, her carriage, filling him with joy and pride as he leads her to the floor to join the dancing each night.

By spring, Jocelyn has a place as lady of the bedchamber to the Princess and her admired figure is no longer quite so girlishly slender. Will curves his hands around her waist, thumbs brushing over the burgeoning curve of her stomach, and gazes up at her. “You’re certain?”

She gives him her beautiful, bright smile, the one where her teeth part slightly in happiness, and touches his cheek, her fingers light. “I have missed two months now, and Christiana says I have been lucky so far.”

“Lucky?” Will blinks, mystified, and rests his cheek against her stomach. A child. A _son_ , with her dark eyes and his determination, or a daughter, pretty pattern of her mother, Jesu, a child to raise and protect and love. A child will need a home. A child cannot be raised in a share of a room in another man’s court. He can’t remember ever feeling such elation and such terror in the same moment, visceral, tight knots of joy and fear twisting in his belly.

“Because I have not been ill,” she explains from above him, fingers sliding into his hair, feeling so small, so slender. “Some women are sick all the time.”

Will’s certain that he’d have noticed if she’d been ill. He draws back and reaches up to take her hand, gently pulling her down to him. “You have never been more beautiful,” he tells her softly, and means every word.

~~~

Springtime means more than the start of tournaments; it means the resurrection of wars that have lain dormant through snow and ice and enough rain to founder horses and siege engines alike. Edward’s army assembles in the courtyard, horseshoes striking sparks from the cobbles and armour rattling as knights shift in the icy air. Heralds gossip and pale jongleurs blow on their chilled fingers between ballad verses, wagons are loaded, and Will lingers awkwardly near the gate, knowing that from one of the windows, Jocelyn is watching, waiting to see him go.

He’s a knight without knightly training. He can joust with the best, he can swing a sword at a tournament, he can aim and throw a spear, but he’s older than most of the knights here and yet is one of the few who’s never seen battle. He’s never killed a man. He’s not even sure that he can.

Yet Edward is his lord. Edward has granted legitimacy to his claimed knighthood. Edward has given him grounds to claim his lady, has given him shelter and food and position and if Will does not do this, his loyalty is worthless and his valour is only play. So he will follow the Prince into battle; he will leave behind his pregnant wife and his friends.

“You’re mad, you know,” Roland says conversationally.

Leave behind _most_ of his friends.

“Yes, thank you, Roland.” Will cranes his neck to look up at the windows. Surely that flash of colour is Jocelyn moving? “It’s my duty.”

Roland snorts. “Your duty to get killed? That’s a new one. Since when have you cared about duty?”

“It’s my _honour_.” Edward’s honour, and Will carries a part of that, which lends more weight to his own when it makes up a part of Edward’s honour.

“Oh, well, then,” Roland says dryly. “That explains it all, that does. Where’s Wat?”

Perhaps it’s not Jocelyn. Will settles back in his saddle and looks down at Roland. “He’s not coming.”

It shouldn’t have surprised him, but it had still hurt on some level when Wat had flatly refused to leave his tavern.

“First sensible thing he’s ever done.” Roland shifts his pack. “Just you, me, and Kate, then.”

“Kate?” Will startles enough that his horse takes a step and he has to pause to calm the gelding to steadiness again. “What? No. I mean, _no_. I’m not taking a woman to war.”

Roland snorts again. “You try telling her that.” He nods across the square to where Kate’s demonstrating hammer techniques to another blacksmith who’s got a little too close for Kate’s liking.

Will winces.

~~~

War is nothing like the ballads. Will hadn’t expected it to be, much, but the chaos of his first battle is still a shock. It’s _loud_ , shouts and grunts of fighting melded with the harsh shrieks and clangs of metal striking metal, the meatier thuds of swords and spears striking flesh, the surprised screams of horses injured and dying. It’s hot, despite the cold of the spring day, his body heat creating a personal oven inside his armour, sweat flattening his hair under his helmet and dripping, stinging, into his eyes, blinding his vision as much as the low sun. It’s fast, faster than the tournament competition. These are not men husbanding their strength for later rounds, these are men fighting for their lives and for their livelihoods, to end the battle as swiftly as they can while they still have breath in their bodies and sinew in their arms.

The first time Will kills a man, it feels more like a dream than reality, but no nightmare ever stared at him from the end of his sword, ever sprayed hot blood across his face, or smelled so badly, the stink of death-loosened bowels strong enough to override the hot metal stench of his helmet, to fill his nose and dizzy his head. He sags, awkward, trying to free his blade and not to think that what it catches on is bone, that he’s just sent a man’s soul to judgement, that the weight pulling at his arm is no longer a man but only meat fit for crows and worms.

A heavily booted foot comes past and knocks the body free. Suddenly light, Will staggers, colliding with a solid body in a clang of armour and he turns to judge whether the obstacle is friend or foe.

The eyes regarding him through the slit are dark, familiar. “Next time,” Edward says, his voice rough, “faster.”

Will nods, beyond surprise that the Prince has evaded his guard to find the heaviest fighting, and reaches out to catch the reins of his horse. He’d been knocked from the saddle; it’s a miracle that both he and Solomon have survived to find each other again. “Yes, my lord,” he replies, sounding hollow from the echo inside his helmet. “My lord, my horse...”

Edward waves him off. There’s a faint hint of crinkle around his eyes that suggests, somewhere behind the helmet, Edward is smiling. “Is a very fine horse, Sir William, but not one worthy of a prince.”

It’s a relief, but Will is loath to leave his lord unmounted and unguarded. “Then...”

“Oh, mount up, damn you.” Edward reaches past him to take Solomon’s reins. “I will do well enough, and I will not argue this with you now.”

Will will not argue it at all, despite his unease. No matter his concerns, it is not in him to go against the Prince’s will. He braces his hands against the pommel and Solomon’s back, hoisting himself into the saddle with a clatter. “I will not leave you here!”

“You will have no choice!” Edward spins, shield raised to catch a falling mace, and twists quicker than Will’s eye can follow, sword striking out to impale the opportunistic enemy and back to leave his opponent bleeding his life into the ground moments before Edward’s guards crash in among them, spare horse tossing his head until Edward can catch the rein to steady him.

The guards circle around them long enough for Edward to mount, reins gathered as he looks back at Will. “Like that,” he says.

It takes a moment for Will to realise that Edward is referring to the dead man as a lesson. Sickness spins sour in his stomach even as he nods again, lips pressed together and hidden inside his helmet as he swallows back bile. “Yes, my lord.”

“Good lad,” Edward says cheerfully, spurs his horse, and canters off into the fray, his guard following swiftly after.

Will tugs his helmet off far enough to vomit abruptly over Solomon’s shoulder, spits to clear his mouth, then pulls it back into place and veers off at a different angle to the one taken by Edward.

~~~

Battle wanes as daylight does. There’s no formal cease to the fighting, but as the sun sinks lower and horses and knights alike miss their footing, more men retreat from the field, back to the cluster of wagons where the trail of followers are waiting to make camp. Tents are hastily erected (Edward’s pavilion first) and fires started, food unpacked from wagons and physicians begin to make their rounds.

Will itches. Standing still as Roland unbuckles and loosens his armour is a chore, more with Kate clicking her tongue at each piece handed to her for checking. He shoots her an impatient look, and she subsides to muttering under her breath about tensile strength and weaknesses.

He ignores her, and shifts position again.

Roland slaps the back of his head. “Solomon was easier than you,” he grumbles.

“Solomon can’t understand what you’re saying,” Will retorts, lifts his arm for Roland to reach another buckle, then winces as the shift of armour presses against bruises he’s learning for the first time, ignored on the battlefield and coming to his attention now in a heavy wash of exhaustion.

And itching as dried sweat plasters his clothes to his skin.

“If I only had my forge,” Kate laments, holding the plate up to the last rays of the dying sun. “You’ll be patched for tomorrow.”

Patched, and only his second day in battle. “I thought you said it would withstand blows?”

She gives him a filthy look. “It was made for tournaments. Not war.”

“There’s a difference?” That’s something he should have known. Something a knight would know.

Something a blacksmith knows, apparently, as she snatches the final plate from Roland and flounces off to a safe distance to unroll her tools and set to work.

“Idiot,” Roland mutters, and spreads a blanket on the ground next to the fire. “Now, are you hurt?”

“No, I’ve been on a battlefield all day and I’m fresh as a daisy,” Will says impatiently, catches Roland’s eye, and sighs. “Nothing’s broken or bleeding.”

Roland nods, pressing Will down towards the blanket. “Everything’s where it should be?”

Will rotates his shoulders cautiously, then his wrists, and his ankles. No matter how good Kate’s armour is at letting him move, there’s still a sense of novelty in the flexibility he’s rediscovering now he’s out of his armour. “Feels like it.”

“Good,” Roland says briskly. “I’ll just be getting you some water, then.”

“I’m not thirsty,” Will says. It’s not quite true, but he doesn’t want the effort of drinking. Or eating. Or anything.

Roland stares at him. “It’s not for drinking, it’s for washing. You stink worse than Sir Ector.”

Will can feel the heat rising in his face as he realises the truth of that. He’s been caught in his own stench all day and his nose is accustomed to it. Now, faced with Roland’s plain speaking, childhood memories return of the times _he’d_ been the squire removing armour from the weary knight, nose wrinkled and face half turned away against the smell of sweat and blood and worse released by the stained, padded tunic underneath. “Water, then,” he agrees hastily. “And ale. And food for all of us.”

“Yes, my lord,” Roland says, a slight twist to his mouth accompanying the dryness of his tone, and turns to go, stopping when a very familiar herald approaches.

Edward’s herald.

Will’s heart sinks.

The herald approaches, only the slightest flare of his nostrils displaying his distaste for Will’s post-battle perfume. “Sir William Thatcher?”

Courtesy demands that Will should stand. Courtesy can take a flying leap. “Yes? I mean, I am Sir William,” he confirms, wary.

The herald performs an intricately flourished bow. “My lord begs the honour of your company for dinner.”

Behind the herald, Roland’s eyebrows rise high enough to meet his hair. Kate’s hammer falters in its rhythm. Will is very well aware that the politely worded invitation is a veiled command that has nothing to do with begging. “Please tell your lord that I would be delighted to join him,” he says wearily. “Shortly.”

Time first to wash and to dress, in order that he will not offend Edward’s aristocratic nose and eyes.

~~~

Edward is not alone when Will is finally ushered, freshly washed and dressed, into the Prince’s pavilion. He hadn’t expected it; security alone dictates that Edward will always be guarded, but it’s his position that draws people around him. Wasps to honey, he remembers Chaucer saying once, but although he can see the courtiers as wasps, Edward is far sharper than honey and less cloying.

Will makes his bow, straightening up to find Edward watching him, lazy eyes warm with something that looks like approval. Possibly amusement. “Your Highness,” he says politely.

“Sir William Thatcher.” Edward nods acknowledgment, doesn’t rise from his chair. “Join us.”

The pavilion is large enough that a brazier burns in the centre. Tapestries and furs are spread around it to block the chill from the ground. Will picks his careful way to a free space, settling on his knees close to the heat of the brazier. A page hands him a mug of ale and Will takes it, cradling it close to his chest, not certain yet of the etiquette. Jocelyn would know, or Chaucer, but Will still isn’t sure if it’s acceptable to drink before he sees the Prince do the same. “Thank you, my lord.”

"My newest knight.” Edward smiles, the tight smile that Will’s seen too often at court, and raises his goblet in toast. After a moment of startled silence, the men around the brazier follow suit, muttering echoes before taking gulps of their wine and ale.

This, at least, Will knows how to answer. He inclines his head in thanks, and returns the toast, lifting his tankard high. “My lord prince.”

The courtiers are swifter to follow that one, the toasts sounding almost relieved. Edward laughs and nods in return. “Now, leave us.”

A short interview, but Will is certainly not about to question the whims of his lord. He takes a hasty gulp of his ale, and begins to rise to his feet.

“Not you, Sir William,” Edward says, a flick of his hand indicating the others around the room. “I would have words with you.”

Will sinks back onto his knees and takes another fortifying drink. He suspects he’s going to need it.

Alone with the Prince of Wales is never truly alone. The knights have gone, but two of Edward’s guard remain by the entry flap, and a page stands behind Edward to take and refill his goblet. Edward leans back when he accepts the fresh wine, murmuring something Will can’t hear, and the page bobs a swift bow and leaves. It’s as much privacy as they’re going to get.

Will stays where he is and holds onto his tankard. “My lord - ”

“Edward,” his lord interrupts, cutting him off, and rises from his chair to ease himself down to the furs beside Will. “Enough of ceremony, Will, for this one day.”

If there’s one thing that Will doesn’t believe the Prince can do, it’s set aside ceremony, even for one day. He’s fought to achieve his position, but one man rising above his stars does nothing to change the restrictions of society for the majority. Princes included. “Prince Edward,” he says quietly: a compromise, one that still feels daring in his mouth.

Edward laughs softly. “Very well. You fought well today, Will. It will not go unnoticed.”

“I don’t fight to be noticed.” Not on the battlefield. On the tourney field, always, but the battlefield is more different than he'd ever imagined it might be.

“And that,” Edward says plainly, “is why I notice. Your first kill, was it not?”

Will nods, the ale curdling in his belly. “And second.” And others, faces he won’t think of now but which will haunt him in his sleep, he’s certain.

“And more.” Edward shifts his weight onto one hip, one knee raised, foot flat on the furs. “That explains it, then.”

“Explains?” Will looks up, startled. His hesitation, maybe, or that he’d needed help to free his sword.

“Why you did not kill Count Adhemar.”

Will can feel his eyes widen. As much as he believes that the world would be a better, kinder place without Adhemar in it, killing Adhemar has never occurred to him as a possibility. Even when Adhemar had seemed likely to steal Jocelyn from him, even when hatred had seethed black in his heart for the man without enough honour to face him honestly on the tourney field, when Adhemar had revealed his deception and cast him into gaol, when Adhemar had tipped his lances with the clear intention of killing Will, Will has never sought or desired to seek Adhemar’s life.

Edward’s watching him intently, drinking his wine in slow sips. “I thought as much,” he says. “You’re a good man, Will. I need good men.”

“You have me, my lord,” Will replies, at a loss for anything else to say. His service, his loyalty are both Edward’s, and he can see no reason why it should not remain so.

“Do I?” Edward asks cryptically. “Perhaps. Will you win this battle for me?”

The phrasing carries an odd weight, something about the shape of it familiar and yet unrecognised. “If I can,” he says.

“You can.” Edward holds up his goblet. Another page appears from nowhere to take it from him, and Edward uses his newly free hand to clap Will on the shoulder, causing ale to slosh in his tankard from the weight of it. “But will you?”

Will looks into Edward’s eyes, wishing he could understand what isn’t being said. “I will, my lord.”

“Edward,” Edward says softly. “Edward, Will.”

“I will, Edward,” Will says obediently.

“Good man.” Edward looks at him a moment longer, then moves away, rolling to sit square on the fur. “Eat with me.”

It’s not a request. Will agrees anyway.

~~~

The battle lasts for three more days. Will stops keeping count of the men he’s killed and spends each evening in Edward’s pavilion before stumbling back to his own cold tent to sleep with Kate and Roland, huddled together for warmth. He’s stopped thinking of Kate as a woman. She’s just another warm body in the night, much as Wat used to be except she snores less than Wat ever did and is far more useful in mending his armour and tending to Solomon.

At the end of the fourth day, he stands behind Edward on the battlefield as Edward formally accepts surrender from the herald who brings it. He’s cold and weary enough to drop, but he will not. It’s a matter of pride to remain standing while terms are negotiated, to hear the lists of prisoners’ names read out and to hear the ransoms agreed for each. He doesn’t expect it to take so long, nor to recognise any of the prisoners as they are led forward and formally exchanged, man for man, man for gold, man for man and gold for the higher ranked prisoners.

“We camp here tonight,” Edward declares, his voice ringing clear through the afternoon air. “Tomorrow, we move on.”

Will suppresses a sigh. On. Not back to Aquitaine and Jocelyn, but on. Aquitaine is probably too much to hope for, since they’ve only been away for a few weeks, but allowing for time to travel back, if he headed back now, he’ll still have been away for more than a month by the time he sees Jocelyn again. His duty keeps him with Edward. His heart is still with Jocelyn and their child in Aquitaine.

“Not with His Nibs tonight, then?” Roland asks when he brings water into the tent for Will to wash.

Will struggles out of his padded tunic. He’s beginning to hate that thing already, the stench of battle and his body clinging to it, enough that he’s not sure it will ever wash out fresh again. Not that they're likely to be able to stop long enough to launder it, never mind let it dry. “What?”

“Quite the royal favourite, you are.” Roland tugs, Will pulls, and the tunic and Will finally part company. “Three nights running he’s sent for you.”

“And others.” Will’s definitely seen the same faces in the pavilion each night. Some of the same faces, anyway.

Roland makes an unconvinced sound, holding the tunic as far from him as possible. “Just you be careful. I've heard stories about the Prince of Wales.”

“You’ve heard stories about everyone,” Kate says, pushing in with no regard for Will’s nakedness. “Like one of the old aunts back home.”

“They know what’s going on,” Roland says sourly, moving to try to shield Will from Kate’s view.

“They’re nosy old women, and so are you.” Kate rolls her eyes, clearly visible, which means Roland’s failing. “Oh, he’s got nothing I haven’t seen before. Will, the herald’s here for you.”

“Again?” Will rubs roughly at his armpits with the washrag, cursing under his breath at the chill of the water. “I wasn’t expecting him tonight. Do I have anything left to wear?”

Roland mutters something about the Prince not minding what he’s wearing, Kate chides him, and Will pulls the first tunic he can find from his packs. Nothing’s fresh, but some things are more fit for company. Relatively. He struggles into it, lets Roland pull it straight and fuss with his hair, and tries to think. “Eat something, I’ll be back to sleep. Be prepared to move on in the morning.”

“On or home?” Roland asks as Will hops around to tug his boots on.

“On. Where _is_ home?” Will says wearily, standing still to brush his tunic down.

“My forge,” Kate says longingly.

“What she said,” Roland agrees. “And with your wife. And Wat.”

His wife. Jocelyn seems a world away, a lifetime away. Jocelyn lives in a world of peace and security (he hopes); where there is no fighting, no bloodshed. Where meals are served daily and clothes are cleaned, where sleep happens in beds rather than on the cold ground to the tune of Roland’s snores. Where Jocelyn is, please God, growing rounder with their child beneath her heart.

Wat, even at this distance, is somehow more real. He’s easy to picture: also growing rounder, but from rich food rather than an incumbent child, tables of his tavern sanded down daily and with Chaucer firmly ensconced in one corner observing the patrons and writing who can tell what in the evenings before the gaming begins.

“My wife,” Will says softly. Another reality.

“Aye, your wife,” Kate echoes. “She’ll be how far gone now?”

Will counts on his fingers. The time she told him, the time to prepare for departure, and the time they’ve been travelling and fighting. It’s surprisingly low. “Four months.”

Kate nods. “She won’t hate you yet, then.”

Roland rolls his eyes and pushes Will towards the flap that serves as doorway. “Give her another half year for that. Will, don’t keep His Highness waiting.”

“I thought you didn’t want me going to his pavilion every night,” Will protests, twisting to try to look back at Kate, because he doesn’t want Jocelyn hating him at all, either now or in six months.

“Not my decision, though, is it?” Roland holds the flap open and Will ducks outside, shivering in the chill breeze of the evening. “Not my place to deny the Prince some company.”

There’s something in Roland’s tone that Will would question another time, but not now, because Roland’s right. The Prince is waiting.

~~~

Since the first night Edward summoned him, Will hasn’t been alone with the Prince. No matter what Roland might think. The other knights are always around, more of them tonight with the battle over and won, wine instead of ale lending their talk a rowdy tone as it turns to women loved and left, tuneless songs too loud within the heat of the pavilion.

Will keeps Jocelyn to himself, her name in his heart, and doesn’t sully it by sharing it with men who seem to hold a higher regard for their horses than their mistresses. At length, they begin to drift outside, and Will dares to breathe again, hoping for a swift escape.

“Will,” Edward calls, just as Will reaches the door-flap. “Stay a while.”

Suppressing his sigh, Will turns back, finding a courtly smile for his lord. “Your Highness.”

Edward laughs, patting his thigh. “Come, Will. Take a seat. I will not keep you long from your bed.”

He hasn’t missed that Edward has an actual bed, wooden frame erected in one corner of the pavilion and heaped with furs against the cold nights. His own bed is a rolled blanket, and his haste to it is born of weariness and the certain knowledge that he will sleep more soundly if he can fall asleep before Roland starts snoring. “I am yours to command.”

“In some matters,” Edward agrees. “In this, perhaps. I have a letter for you.”

At first, he can’t think of anyone who might be writing to him. Wat can’t write and Chaucer knows that he can’t read. “A letter?”

“From your wife.” Edward smiles and pulls a roll of parchment from his doublet. “The messenger arrived today.”

Will settles on the fur at Edward’s feet and takes the parchment doubtfully. “Thank you, my lord.”

“Well, don’t stand on ceremony, man!” Edward smiles down at him as if he’s doing Will a great favour. In a way, Will supposes that he is: private messages are expensive to deliver, so a letter from Jocelyn carried with what must have been Edward’s dispatches from court is an honour indeed. “Read it! What does she say?”

Slowly, Will unrolls the letter. For all the sense that he can make of the marks scratched onto the parchment, they may as well have been written by the owl which had awoken him early that morning. “She, uh... She sends you greetings, and says that she is well...”

Edward snorts. “Come, no need for shyness. We have spilled blood together, you and I. What does she truly say?”

Will contemplates trying to extend the bluff for longer, but it’s possible - even likely - that Edward has already read the letter. If it arrived with his own messages, it could have been an honest mistake, or it could simply have been a matter of expediency, to know what information is being sent to his knights. “I can’t tell,” he admits, head lowered, and half rolls the parchment again, thumb rubbing against the remains of a seal broken before he’d touched it.

“You would keep secrets from me now?” Edward asks softly, but there’s no gentleness in his softness. More a hint of something dangerous, not yet a threat, but something that could easily become one.

“No, my lord prince,” Will says hastily, looking up. “Only... I cannot read.”

Edward’s eyebrows rise, and he holds his hand out. “Surely her penmanship is not so poor?”

Not sure what else to do, Will places the letter back in Edward’s hand. “I can’t tell. I mean, of course not, I’m sure it’s excellent.” Exquisite. Everything about Jocelyn is exquisite. (Save, his memory traitorously supplies, for her temper.) “I never _learned_ to read.”

He’s never needed to. He’s never been expected to. The priest reads the Bible aloud to the congregation, and he’d seen no other written word in his lifetime until Edward’s court.

“I see,” Edward says thoughtfully. “Shall I tell you, then, what she says?”

Will hesitates. He wants to know what Jocelyn has to tell him, aches for it with a fierceness that belies the distance between them, that burns to nothing the unreality her memory had raised in him a few short hours earlier. And yet... “I... There are scribes.” He hasn’t seen them, but there must be scribes.

“And what should a scribe know of what passes between a man and his wife?” Edward snorts and unrolls the parchment, apparently taking that as agreement. “She is well, she says. She hopes you are well... in very many words, she hopes you are well.”

A letter has several blessings, Will discovers. One, that Jocelyn will never know how he’s been for the last few days, or how the battle has affected him. He murmurs thanks, and props up one knee, wrapping his arms around it, feeling a little like a child waiting to be told a winter’s tale.

“You’re a lucky man,” Edward says slowly, his eyes on the parchment. “A very lucky man. Perhaps, when you return to court, you should ask Jocelyn to teach you to read.”

Will’s distantly disappointed that Edward isn’t reading out Jocelyn’s words as she has written them to him. It’s a kindness to tell him at all, but this faint hint of contact has him longing for more, to know her words even if he cannot hear her voice reading them. “It would be something to fill the winter evenings,” he agrees, although he can think of far more pleasurable ways to fill that time.

“One thing.” Edward smiles crookedly. “I was not aware that your wife is increasing, Will. I wish you well.”

“Thank you.” It’s not something he’s intentionally kept secret. If asked, he would have guessed that Edward knew, but thinking back reminds him that he has not shared their hopes beyond his immediate circle. “We hope... The child should be born before All Saints’ Day.”

“A lucky child indeed.” Edward nods, looking back at the letter. “You have served me well in this battle. Is there no boon you would ask of me in return for your service?”

Will has the awkward feeling that there’s something he _should_ be asking for. Something Edward expects him to ask for, and he can’t even begin to guess what it would be. Unless... “I can’t leave in the middle of a campaign!”

“And I would not give you leave to do so,” Edward says firmly, rolling up the parchment. “Something else. Something for yourself.” He pauses. “Something for your son.”

Abruptly, Will remembers the aching quiet in the court at the beginning of the last winter, and the funeral service held around the painfully small grave in the frozen churchyard. “He will need a godfather,” he says cautiously. “Chaucer isn’t exactly a man of the church and Wat...”

Edward snorts and holds up a hand. “Do not, Will. It is not what I meant, but I will stand before God to protect your son.”

“Thank you.” Will bows his head, silently praying that it’s enough, that he’s got it right this time. “You honour us.”

“I suppose I do,” Edward says. There’s a faint creak, then a pressure and warmth on his hair that Will identifies from the shifting shadows as Edward’s hand upon his head. “Let me honour you in more material ways, since you will not ask me for it. There is a manor not far from our court in Aquitaine, a little neglected, perhaps, but a manor nonetheless. Land that will pay if you manage it properly, and a farm that will feed you. My scribes will draw up the deeds tonight.”

Will stays perfectly still under Edward’s hand. “You’re giving me land?”

“No, Will.” Edward pats his head once, then his shoulder, then retreats. “You have earned land in return for your service here. Continue to serve me well, and I will see that you return to it in time to make the building sound before your son is born.”

Or daughter, Will wants to add, but will not. Edward has lost a son; Will may gain one. If he does, his son will have land to inherit. Land, and a house, and a future. If he does not, his daughter will have shelter and a dowry. “You’re too kind, Your Highness.”

“Yes,” Edward says dryly. “I suppose I am. Take your letter, Will. Go dream of your wife.”

Will stands up carefully, lifting his eyes to Edward’s face as he takes the parchment he cannot read and the nebulous hope for a future.

There are battles still to fight, a campaign to win, and a summer to survive, but at the end of it wait the things worth fighting for. His wife, his child, their household, their security, and posterity.

First, though, will be the months of loyal and freely-given service to a prince who judges him worthy of such a future.

He tucks the letter into his tunic, and smiles. “I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the quotation "Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens", JRR Tolkein.
> 
> Many, many thanks to lvs2read for beta services, and fan_elune, matsujo9, becky_h and yoritomo_reiko for being wonderful cheerleaders!


End file.
